As I have thought about how best to respond to this Occupy Wall St. business, it seems to me that it really should be treated with the seriousness it deserves. It is not every day that the body politic gets covered with economically illiterate pustules.
We are trying to make out their demands — for are we not profoundly interested? — but unfortunately their peculiar articulation of economic theory indicates that they apparently don’t have a roof in their mouths. I can’t quite decipher . . . But Jim Wallis has said that the protesters are “standing with Jesus.” That, all by itself, is enough to make any right-minded citizen want to scurry up a tree and start throwing coconuts.
This chinless throng is in serious need of getting itself jugged. Why doesn’t someone with a badge and drawn truncheon see this need and fill it? Now because we should focus on metaphors for economic understanding, and not descend to personalities, we will refrain from any detailed discussion of personal or corporate hygiene. We will merely speculate about the approximate number of iPhone 4s in this assemblage of those taken from the 99% who are the oppressed of our nation.
Not exactly numbered among the true and honest toilers of the earth, this luxuriant disarray, this bleating mélange, this high wafting odor of moldering brown, this point d’appui for tramp cyclists with flat tires, this collection of unfortunate goopishness nonpareil, this school of bewildered halibuts, this socialistic ship taking on water at every seam, this corpse of Keynesianism that has been left out in the rain overnight, this scarecrow of economic theory out of which the sawdust has all trickled, this progresso-slush of the highest order, this embodied view of class warfare so aptly articulated by Marx in a late night manifesto written after a gallon or so of trade gin . . . oh, words fail me.
Not all jam being a leftist. They know how to demonize absolutely everyone but the demons.